So Hengst,
I hope the professor/instructor of your MC class also mentioned how the Wellesley teacher who wrote up the list of 50 ignored the fact that more than half of those items have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with organically established norms of a group of people. The remaining half are largely inconsequential stereotypes.
In other words, "I can be pretty sure that my kids' teachers won't have problems with my kids race." Is certainly true of white people in America, but equally true of Vietnamese children in Vietnam. And the idea that she can go shopping without being harrassed is true for a white woman in America (well some neighborhoods anyway) but not for a white, english-speaking woman in Egypt.
"I can speak in front of a group of powerful males and not have my race put on trial..."
...is the in same boat, but what if it wasn't? So what if a prejudiced group of old men judge my race wrongly? The stereotype is that such a group makes a life-limiting decision based on such prejudices, but there is no way to demonstrate how a bunch of old cronies not liking a race translates into disadvantage for a social minority (defined by race or otherwise). Because the powerful tribal leaders don't really control who sells you a house or who gives you a job, and their preferences simply reflect the opinions of the majority anyway.
Articles and essays like this are wrong before written because they start with the untried assumption that the few power-makers (in her case, literally, "the man"
control society. They ignore the power if individual decision making rising into collective conciousness. Each of those old men had mommies who taught them. Each of those mommies talked with other mommies and formed opinions. Each of those ladies in a social network had the opportunity to comprehend and independently evaluate the information they were presented with--and make their decisions based on conscience.
A group of people collectively deciding to prefer one thing over another is not the same thing as racist, exclusionary behavior. It's called normal life and it favors the perception of normalcy and it happens because our brains desire to encode such information into a few short ideas so that we can get on with the busier activities associated with our survival and fulfillment.
The obnoxious idea that white men are secretly building up impermeable power structures (besides being false) negates the power of each individual classified as "underprivledged" at the expense of creating a prejudice towards those the author labels "privledged." Her very attempt to document this undermines her very purpos in articulating it--at THAT assumes she IS right.
Aagh. Don't get me started.
